All Blog Posts (58)

For the past six months, I've been writing notes to myself to review and probably close my Survey Monkey account. I opened my 'paid for' account in July 2008 with the thought that I would create lots of great surveys that would enhance my business and I've been dutifully paying the $29.90/month (or what ever that's worked out to with the $/£ exchange rate). With all of the energy I keep using to remember that I need to review my account and writing myself a note - I could have sorted this out… Continue

I'm organising a conference for the middle of this year around the themes of creativity and collaboration, focusing on the engineering and built environment sector. The intention is to create an experiential opportunity for those involved in the industry (and those who may not be directly involved) to feel a truly collaborative and creative project.

Key themes:

Reclaiming the right to play. We see the necessity and then 'get' how to do it - without the… Continue

With just 2 years to go to the Olympics athletes know the challenge ahead! To be part of it (let alone winning medals ) will involve years of dedication and practice with a very clear and specific dream to be achieved. Assuming athletes are human (!! ) then maybe we can be successful by using the following techniques..
1. Ensure your outcome is positively stated
As there is a tendency to get what you focus on ensure that your focus is a positive one!
Answer the question “what do… Continue

Great Leaders of the future will be adaptable, empowering, diverse, customer focussed and emotionally intelligent. These were the conclusions from a meeting of 20 MBA graduates (South West Alumni Network) hosted by the Open Business School and run by Paul Maisey of Buffin Leadership International.

After discussing known trends such as economic globalisation, demographic changes and the impact of technology the group went on to create their own model of what great leadership would be… Continue

Over the last few years, a new way of looking at big plans, policy shifts and projects is to analyse them from the perspective of ecosystem services.

We all rely on ecosystem services, whether we like it or not - and whether we know it or not. We all eat food. We all drink water. We all breathe air. Mostly, in a country like the UK, we just don’t realise that these are ecosystem services – to most of us, carrots come from the supermarket, not an ecosystem.

Social networking plays a large part in modern society, but how far can employers go in monitoring the internet use of their workers and potential employees? Local employment solicitors at EmploymentLawHelp are urging employers to be cautious when delving onto sites such as Facebook or MySpace and are advising them to follow simple guidelines in order to avoid a networking… Continue

One of the many activities that I am involved in is the spread of TRIZ. TRIZ is the Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.

In the 1950's a group of Russians, led by Genrich Altshuller developed a methodlogy for solving problems. Based upon a rigorous study of patents, Altshuller determined how technical problems were solved. Based upon the determinations, he categorized the methods into a series of Inventive Pronciples and the operators that make the principle… Continue

This year's Do Lectures are appearing in short form on Treehugger before being posted on the Do Lectures website. With a little help from iTunes and a bunch of very well connected communications experts, we're hoping to share the talks with a 1 million people to spread inspiration and tools for action.

There was a fascinating discussion during the first meeting of the St Albans AMED group about what connected us as OD practitioners. For one thing, we mostly didn't call ourselves OD practitioners, but felt we might be thought of in that way from time to time.

When we discussed what OD was, I certainly recognised some of the practices.

It was said:

When organisations have complex, intangible problems that are difficult to articulate, those problems belong to… Continue

A new professional body for Solution Focused (SF) coaches, consultant and managers was launched in May 2009.

SFCT – the Association for the Quality Development of Solution Focused Consulting and Training – offers international professional recognition and standards to anyone using the Solution Focused in business and organisational settings.

In career and talent management practice the high potential employee who is a business critical, individual contributor represents one of the most valuable resources an organisation has. They are a sizeable investment and managing their careers can be challenging task - especially for the manager whose personal career plan looks very different. Getting the best out of them can be a critical factor in an organisation's shared success and is an important part of many manager’s roles. These… Continue

More and more managers are today having to manage redundancy programmes. One of the most difficult communication challenges they face takes place on the very day employees leave. Perhaps this is because the formal announcements can be scripted and prepared for, perhaps it is because "leaving day" combines informality, challenge, emotion and real, physical change in a very poignant way. (It is difficult not to be impacted by the sight of valued colleagues literally "packing up their bags" and… Continue

When Mentors have agreed to providing participants in a development programme with the results of their 360 degree feedback their role "takes on new clothing".

The Mentor role is extremely important to the 360 degree process, and needs to be carried out well to ensure that the participant gets the maximum out of the feedback. Effective facilitation of the feedback session will enable individuals to get the most out of this development opportunity. Ineffective facilitation is likely… Continue

Some questions we pose as consultants are 'good-looking ones'. I mean they will always draw a fulsome response. For instance, if you ask some people in a 'coasting' organisation 'what are the barriers to achieving excellence here?' they will probably give you a list long enough to make your ears bleed.
However, for every good looking question there is always an 'ugly' one just round the corner. The one here is 'What have you done about these barriers?' These are questions which must be… Continue

With President Obama's first 100 days fresh in the mind, I have been reflecting on "executive on-boarding programmes". Do they really make a difference and enable senior executives - new to the complexities of our corporate environment - to be effective as soon as possible? Have we got the balance of activities right? Is an accent on building a network really helping? Could we, perhaps, boil the whole thing down to five simple questions that incoming business leaders should ask their… Continue